Versed in Desire

Chapter Two



November…

I’d made a choice.

For months I’d chosen to live, to work, to create, to simply exist without having Luke. Work weeks passed, spreadsheets and presentations, lunch orders and travel arrangements punctuated by fever dreams of Luke and me doing what we hadn’t done. Weekends should have been better, with free time, friends, the beauty of fall in Manhattan. Instead, they were somehow worse, a slow crawl through longing to the ache of Monday.

I’d made a choice, and I suffered the consequences.

Things might have continued this way indefinitely if the Yankees hadn’t won the World Series, giving Tony sufficient reason to throw another party. Of course I declined the invitation. But come Saturday night I was strung tight. Aching. Disconnected from anything that mattered to me. You didn’t need battering rams and catapults to destroy fortifications. The simple drip drip drip of water against stone would do it, if allowed enough time.

I wasn’t made of stone.

Before me lay another choice, remain in limbo or surrender to what felt inevitable. I consigned the consequences to Monday and dressed in black leather pants, a lacy, stretchy white camisole, and a tight velvet jacket. After pushing through the crowd at Tony’s front door I got a glass of wine the same shade of deep, rich red as my jacket. From my position by the floor-to-ceiling windows I watched Luke work his magic on another woman.


The new face of J’Suis Cosmetics stood in front of him, her bony, bird-wing shoulder blades and white pants pale against Luke’s black sweater and dark jeans. He leaned negligently against the grand piano and gave every appearance of listening to the smoky-eyed, leggy model/actress, his head tilted attentively as she chattered away about God-only-knew-what, but when she threw back her head and laughed, the high-pitched giggles tinkling merrily under the eighteen-foot ceilings, he looked past her at me.

You still want me to put you up against a wall.

I heard the words as clearly as if he’d spoken them. My heart jumped and kicked for a few beats, straining against the prison of my ribcage. I did. I wanted my back flat to any unmoving surface, his body hard and unrelenting against mine. In mine.

Tonight.

He spoke to the model. Whatever he said wiped the smile off her face, but she recovered her poise and strutted off. My heart leapt as he pushed away from the piano and wound his way through the crowd. Fear and exhilaration warred inside me as he approached and I turned my back to him, hiding my anticipation, my need from the people gathered in Tony’s living room.

Luke stopped behind me, so close I could feel the heat of his body through leather and velvet, and spoke to my reflection in the glass. “I’m surprised you’re here.”

“I can leave,” I said, but the teasing note fell flat.

He threaded his fingers through the soft waves of hair at my temple, then slid it over my shoulder. The better to see my face, I suppose. I’d left my hair loose in part because I hoped he’d get his hands in it, in part because it helped hide the longing in my eyes. That he touched it, left his hand on my shoulder, within a minute of approaching me, shocked me. It shouldn’t have.

“With me?” he asked.

I looked down, away from the dark resolve in his eyes. The butterfly wings beating under my skin were ridiculous. I was no virgin and we’d been circling around this for months.



But choosing wasn’t easy. Choosing guaranteed action, not results. Certainly not security.

Endlessly patient, Luke waited until I turned and met his eyes before he said, “I’ll get us a cab.”

The discordant noise of the party faded into a thrumming space where words, simple single-syllable words, met emotion and became meaning. In that moment, meaning was enough.

“Give me a few minutes,” I said, my voice as low as his.

He said his goodbyes and left. I waited exactly five minutes, then found Tony and pleaded a headache. There wasn’t a hint of curiosity or risqué assumption in my boss’s parting words, only genuine concern. Sometimes, in my more feverish moments, I felt as if the attraction vibrating between me and Luke was a figment of my active imagination.

I walked out of the lobby to find him leaning against a cab at the corner of Hudson and Jay. The streetlights cast shadows across his face, hiding his eyes, but his expression was intense, his mouth set. It was one in the morning in TriBeCa. No one was on the street filled only with Manhattan’s eternal hum, the city’s radiant energy I absorbed through my pores. He said something, but the soft husky murmur blended into the city’s chatter.

I kept walking, my heels clicking against the sidewalk, stopping only when I was an inch from his body. I could have buried my nose in the hollow of his throat, seeking that familiar scent of lust rising from his open collar. I didn’t, though. I tilted my head up, my lips parting as I did. His hands were deep in his pockets, his mouth not quite within reach so I went up on tiptoe and brushed my lips over his. They were firm and tantalizingly warm, the dry skin sliding easily against mine. Sparks popped and my breath halted in my throat.

We stayed like that for an eternal moment, our mouths pressed together, slightly open. I could taste the whiskey he’d drunk at the party, the slightest bite on his breath, even before I slipped my tongue between his lips to gently touch his.

Then one hand scudded up my velvet jacket, under the long fall of my hair as he slanted his head and kissed me. His fingers tangled in my hair, the tug sending tiny pinpricks of pain zipping along my nerves, but the heat of his wrist against my bare nape was what made me shudder.

His breath eased out with a shaky sigh when he came up for air. He opened the cab’s door. “Get in.”

I slid across the torn vinyl back seat, Luke right beside me. He gave his cross streets to the driver, but I leaned into the opening in the plastic window. “No,” I said. “Tenth and Avenue A.”

I wanted him in my space, his body in my bed, his scent on my sheets. I didn’t fool myself into thinking giving in meant permanence. Choosing Luke didn’t guarantee a steady stream of poems, much less a lifelong commitment from a thirty-two-year-old male Manhattanite. He was getting what he’d wanted for the last six months and I felt safe assuming he didn’t care where he got it. But I did. This night might have to last me a long, long time. Maybe forever.

He didn’t question me, just waited until the cab rocketed away from the curb before pulling me across his body and into his lap. I moaned into his open mouth when our lips met, the sound involuntary and shockingly helpless. The kiss wasn’t tentative or questioning. It was hot and slow, his tongue sliding over my lower lip then into my mouth, flickering over the sensitive roof of my mouth then rubbing against my tongue in a tempo so seductive and knowing my eyes fluttered shut.



I am all about rhythm. Every poet is. The cadence of words, the thump of a pulse or a palm, the simple ebb and flow of life around us forms the structure and beat of the stories we tell. The slow stroke-stroke-stroke of Luke’s tongue against mine formed a counterpoint to my racing pulse and set off a torrent of images in my brain, all the ways we could fulfill the promise of six months of foreplay.

When the cab braked to a halt in front of my six-story brick walkup, I fumbled with the handle and slid out, keys in hand. Luke tossed a bill through the plastic divider and followed me across the sidewalk. I unlocked the front door and we hurried up two flights of stairs, his hand firm on my shoulder. My apartment was at the back of the floor and it took a moment to unfasten the two deadbolts and the door lock. As I worked, Luke swept my hair away from my neck and scraped his teeth against the sensitive skin at my hairline. I shuddered, then got the door open and pulled him inside.

Streetlight from Avenue A filtered through my blinds, but the apartment, heated by an aging steam-heat radiator, was dark, warm and close. Luke had the presence of mind to shut and bolt the door before I tugged him into the bedroom.

“Quick, oh quick!” I babbled as I reached for his belt.

He gripped my wrist and stopped me. “No,” he said, shocking the hell out of me. “Not quick. I’ve been waiting for this for six months. Nothing about this is going to be quick.” He closed the bedroom door and backed me into it. I let out a little oof as I bumped up against it and he stepped into my body.

He wove our legs together, one thigh pressed against my mound, the hard thrust of his cock against my hip pinning me to the door. He caught my hands as I reached for him, interlocked our fingers, then pressed the backs of my hands against the door at hip height. I arched against his heavier weight. An illicit, delightful thrill ripped through me when I realized I couldn’t move him.

He didn’t give way but rather leaned into me, his cheek by mine, the rough scrape of his stubble so incongruous when compared to the soft heat of his breath against my ear. Staying as close as possible he eased my velvet jacket down and off, then reversed his course, taking my lacy stretch camisole over my head. That easily, I was naked from the waist up, the ends of my tousled, witchy hair brushing the upper swell of my breasts. The purposeful movements, stripping me for him, sent a hot rain of lust coursing through me.


When he laid his hand flat against my belly, I flinched then gasped as he popped the snap on my pants and worked down the zipper. I gripped the edge of my dresser for support, breathlessly, completely in the moment, not sure what was coming but desperate to get it. He used his knee to widen my stance just a bit, then angled his fingers under the elastic edge of my thong.

My head dropped back. I’d often imagined how he’d take me up against a wall. Skirt to my waist and one leg wrapped around his hips as he pounded into me was a favorite. If I felt especially naughty, I imagined myself naked except for my heels, both hands planted against the wall, my ass arched toward him. In that darker fantasy, I liked him fully dressed, the brush of his jeans against my bare legs so deliciously dominating as he braced a hand at the small of my back and f*cked me hard.



I’d never imagined this, face to face, chest to chest, hip to hip as he drew me into a maelstrom of lust. I flattened my other hand against the door for support, watching his pupils dilate as his fingers glided into my wet heat. His breathing slowed, deepened as he spread the bare lips of my sex, found my * and began exploring. Slow circles became confident strokes as he learned what made me arch and gasp. I wanted to look at him, keep that connection as he touched me, but my eyes closed helplessly as pleasure began to coil tight and hot under his hand.

“You’ve got the sexiest hair,” he murmured, his no-nonsense voice deeper, rougher. “I saw it around your face first, so every single time I saw you in professional mode at work, I wanted to take it down. I saw you walk into the party tonight and all I could think about was holding it back while I watch your mouth slide down my cock.”

I made a throaty, needy sound that was the very definition of unprofessional and shuddered at the image–me on my knees, Luke’s fingers tangled in my hair. My hips arched and twisted but he followed the movements with ease.

He bent his head and kissed me, his tongue flickering over my lips, then along my jaw. “It’s the perfect length, long and dark around your shoulders but not so long it hides your breasts. Your nipples tightened when I described you blowing me. I think you like that idea as much as I do.”

“God, yes…later…Luke, please,” I gasped, then dropped my head back against the door and moaned. My thighs were quivering uncontrollably as he kept up the pace, and I’d forgotten how to breathe. Dots danced in front of my eyes, my body’s reminder to inhale. When I did, my racing pulse sped oxygen through my veins and the fire flared higher. Helpless under his knowing hand, I turned my face to his, seeking his mouth. Another whimper drifted into the air when he kissed me, rubbing his tongue against the sensitive roof of my mouth at the same pace as his finger tormented my *.

I gripped the edge of my dresser. My sweaty palm scudded against the door as my breath caught, held, shuddered out. I tipped my head up, drew in air and held it again, snared by the orgasm cresting under the relentless tempo of his fingers.

When the wave of pleasure broke, my breath eased from my lungs against the hot pressure of his mouth, a soft, keening moan drifting into the still, warm air of my apartment. Luke didn’t speed his pace, rub harder or faster. He simply pressed the pad of his middle finger against my fluttering * and absorbed my body’s shudders with his own until I subsided against the door.

“Better?” he asked. I could hear a smile in his deep voice.

“Took the edge off,” I purred.

I still wanted to take him into me, feel his skin and the weight of his body against mine, hear his breath splinter and dissolve. This time when I went for his belt, he didn’t stop me, just reached under his cotton sweater to unfasten a button at the top of his shirt and pull both sweater and shirt over his head. I guided him to lie back on the unmade bed, stripping off his jeans and boxers as I did. The Birkenstocks dropped to the floor with his clothes and I stood by the edge of the bed, gazing at Luke Morrison, self-proclaimed math geek with an athlete’s body, spread out dark and lean, just as I’d dreamed.

When I stuck my thumbs in the waistband of my leather pants, Luke stopped me. “Leave them on.”

My eyes widened a little at the command, then I glanced at the mirror hanging on my bathroom door. My dark hair was tousled around my face and shoulders, my breasts and waist pale curves in the dim room. The pants rode evocatively low. I flashed him a look through my hair as I smoothed my palms down over the warm, soft leather cupping my ass. “You like these pants?”



He nodded, his hands linked behind his head as he looked at me, and right now the math geek was all rogue. “I like the contrast. So proper at the office, all leather and lace and velvet and silky hair at a party. You’re distracting enough at work, but you drove me crazy tonight.”

“That was the point,” I said, a smile curving my lips as I raised my hands to my hair and tousled it to fall against my cheeks and cling to my wet mouth. His cock jerked when the movement lifted my breasts.

“Saunders kept staring at you,” he growled.

Dave Saunders was a loud, newly divorced forty-something trying to recapture his lost youth. He didn’t bring me cupcakes. He flashed the keys to his new red Corvette and offered me a ride home, extra-special emphasis on ride.

It was pointless to make a choice and then erect walls. “I was there for you, Luke,” I said. “The pants, the hair, it was all for you.”

His eyes went hot and possessive. Without a word he crooked a finger at me. I put one knee on the bed and crawled up his body. As I made my way to his face, the scent of his skin, musk and some kind of plain soap, filtered into my nostrils with each breath until I could close my eyes and pick him out of a group of men by smell alone. When I reached his mouth, I looked down at him, my hair a dark, rumpled curtain framing our faces, then kissed him, pressed the tingling tips of my breasts to his firm chest.

He ran his palm down the length of my spine. “What else do you want to do for me?”

Artfully phrased for a math geek, just the right touch of my choice in how I pleased the expectant sultan waiting in my bed. “Touch you. Taste you,” I said.

A moment’s pause, then he nodded and although I hadn’t been asking permission, the way he granted it sent a jagged rush of desire searing along my nerves. “Pull your hair around,” he said, his voice low. Gruff. “I want to watch.”

Heat swept through me. I sat back and used both hands to sweep the fall of my hair over one shoulder. His eyes dropped to my mouth, then my breasts. When he looked back at my face, I quirked an eyebrow at him.

He touched the tip of one finger to his lips. “Start here. Nice and slow.”

I was going to combust right there in my bed. I kissed him again, compliant desire to please in my lips. I worked my way down his rough jaw to the spot on his neck where his stubble gave way to the unexpected softness of his throat, then the rigid collarbone. Coarser hair hid his nipples until I sought them out, treating each to kittenish laps with my tongue. I followed the hair down to his navel, then shifted to the thin, silky skin covering his hip, finding the rough, curling hair on his legs as I nibbled at his inner thighs.

He lifted his hips and opened his legs in anticipation, but the textures continued to draw me. I nuzzled at his testicles, so soft and delicate, lapping at the sensitive patch underneath. His breath eased out with a groan then he tangled his hands in my hair. I expected a not-so-gentle pressure suggesting I put my mouth where he wanted it but he simply wrapped the strands around his fingers while I made my way to his other thigh, then hip before dipping my tongue in his navel.


Luke was shifting restlessly by the time I braced my hands on either side of his shoulders, slid up his body and kissed him. When my lips met his, the teasing, tempting kisses were gone. One hand tightened in my hair to hold me for a hard, demanding ravaging.

“There’s a name for girls like you,” he growled into my mouth.



I’d spent six months drawing him in yet holding him off, so I didn’t argue. “What?” I asked, all innocence as I took his lower lip between my teeth, then let go. “You wanted slow.”

“I did,” he replied, biting me back. “Now I want you to suck my cock.”

The sting of his teeth coupled with the time’s-up demand made me shudder. “Slow?” I asked, but I was making my way back down his chest as the word left my mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, and another bolt of lust crackled through me.

I love doing this for my partner, love the bitter-almond taste of semen on my tongue, tense muscles, edgy breath, hands in my hair. I stopped at the tip of Luke’s cock, rising and falling with the blood pulsing in the protruding veins and licked the pre-come off the tip. Very deliberately I wrapped one hand around the base and pulled the straining shaft away from his belly.

“Come here,” I invited, flashing a look at him.

Together we slithered to the foot of the bed. He sat up, his legs spread and I knelt between them, my hand still gripping his cock. He absently gathered my hair in his hand, his eyes focused on the curvature of my spine leading to my bottom, resting on my heels. I waited patiently, growing hotter and hotter under his gaze. Only when his eyes met mine again did I lower my mouth to his cock and take him all the way to the back of my throat. My stretched lips met my hand where it gripped his shaft and as I retreated to the tip, I brought the hand with me. A couple of smooth strokes, then a low, rough groan eased from his chest.

I smiled and looked up into his half-open eyes. “Still think I’m a tease?”

“You’re redeeming yourself,” he said.

I liked the hoarse edge to his voice, but that was a big word from a man I wanted reduced to single-syllable words or grunts. With renewed determination I closed my eyes and focused, using the pressure of my teeth against the underside of my tongue to work the sensitive patch right under the head every time I took him deep. When he tensed I sat back and used my fist to stroke his saliva-slicked cock, the pressure too light to do much more than keep him at a simmer.

It was a textbook demonstration of the power of the pause, a brief respite in performance poetry to let an image sink in. I wanted sensation to melt his bones, so I continued like this, backing off every time I felt his control slip a little more, letting him plateau for a moment before continuing. The dichotomy between the submissiveness of a blow job and the undeniable hold I had over him sent pleasure expanding through me and before long, my hips were undulating in rhythm to the pressure of his hands on my head, guiding my movements.

His balls were tight against his body, the soft skin cool to the touch as I gathered them in one hand and moved the other in tandem with my mouth. Every muscle in his body went rigid.

“Ease up,” he commanded hoarsely.

The hand in my hair pulled, a warning I appreciated but didn’t need. I could read the signs of impending orgasm. There was no give in his cock, the wet, satiny skin sliding over a thick steel rod that expanded a bare second before the first pulse of semen landed on the back of my tongue.

He jerked, the involuntary movement punctuating the guttural groan rumbling up from the depths of his chest. In that moment I became everything, his pleasure, the need throbbing in my nipples and between my thighs, the hardness of the wood floor against my knees, the smell of sweat and sex, the tremors rippling through his body as he rode out the orgasm.



I released him. Eyes closed, he sat for a moment, breathing hard. Then he looked at me. Sweat gleamed on his chest and shoulders and I could see his pulse pounding in his throat. More alive than I’d felt in months, I tilted my head at him, lifting an eyebrow to say, How do you like me now?